HTC One M10, Not X9, Rumored New Flagship Device — And It’s As Good As The X9 Was Rumored To Be

Rumors of the new HTC One X9 recently flooded HTC fan circles. The supposed new flagship device from the ailing company had everyone excited — it sounded like a top-of-the-line device, to make up for HTC’s lackluster HTC One M9, which was a critical and sales flop.

Unfortunately, as Know Your Mobile reported, it seemed as if the rumors really were too good to be true. Previously-reliable tipsters, probably from people somewhere within HTC, reported that the X9 specs were utterly wrong, and that the HTC X9 was actually going to come in below the existing HTC One A9. Among the apparent debunks: the device won’t have 3 GB or 4 GB of RAM. It won’t have a 23 MP camera. It won’t have a 3,500 mAh battery.

It was a crushing blow to a lot of fans who had hoped that the One X9 would mark the beginning of a recovery for the once-mighty tech giant. Is HTC doomed to fade into obscurity, making value phones for the Asian market?

Perhaps not just yet. A new report from TechTimes indicates that the leaked specs were mostly accurate — the caveat is that they were for HTC’s new flagship, the HTC One M10. Or possibly the HTC O2, one of the Chinese websites that all of these new rumors have surfaced from is suggesting that the device is the O2, and moving away from their One product line might not be such a bad idea for HTC following the ill-fated One M9.

So here’s the deal. The new flagship phone — we’ll call it the HTC One M10 for now, for the sake of argument — is expected to release in March, 2016, according to Chinese website Mobile Dad. Externally, if their renders of the phone are accurate, it very strongly resembles previous phones in the HTC One line.

As for the specs, the M10 will run a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, a new processor which was just unveiled today, and features a quad-core CPU with 64-bit Kryo cores, which can be clocked at up to 2.2 GHz and is said to be twice as powerful as the previous Qualcomm Snapdragon 810. It’s also said to be more efficient, giving it a higher battery life, and includes an Adreno 530 GPU which carries a 40 percent improvement over the Adreno 430 used in the Snapdragon 810.

It will reportedly carry a full 4 GB of RAM, and either 64 GB or 128 GB of internal storage, with a microSD slot on top of that. The display is rumored to be a whopping 6 inches (by comparison, the latest, highest-end Samsung Galaxy and Apple iPhone are 5.7? and 5.5?, respectively), although they will also be offering a 5? variant for customers who aren’t gorillas. The display is also rumored to support 4K resolution, although many are skeptical about this — the One M9 still only has a Full HD display. That being said, this is the device that will make or break HTC, and it’s worth considering that they may be pulling out all of the stops.

The One M10 will carry a 3,500 mAh battery. It won’t have a 23MP camera, however. Rumor has it that the HTC One M10 will have a 27 MP camera, even better than originally suggested, and it’s also expected to feature a USB Type-C port.

Perhaps most importantly, the HTC One M10, if the rumors are accurate, will be the first Android device released next year running Android 6.0 Marshmallow straight out of the box, and considering Samsung’s track record with Android updates, this may be a feature that brings a lot of customers back over. A smartphone built for and tuned for the latest version of Android is fairly compelling, especially for those upgrading from significantly older models.

Of course, as with all rumors, take these with a grain of salt. That being said, they seem to fit the facts that were already leaked once and a device like this is nearly inevitable from HTC — they need to regain some ground fast after so many quarters in a row of record losses.